“We knew it already there”: CDPR considered making Ciri the lead in The Witcher 4 as early as 2014
Eduard Zamikhovsky
When CD Projekt RED unveiled the first trailer for The Witcher 4 in December 2024, they also confirmed what fans had long suspected: Ciri will be the next main protagonist. But according to a new interview with PC Gamer, the idea to pass the torch to the Lion Cub of Cintra has been around for more than a decade — dating back to the development of Blood and Wine.
It was pretty early on we realised that [Blood & Wine] is where it ends, and also pretty early on, we knew that we wanted to work with Ciri later on…even like 2014, it was already an idea floating around the studio that she’s next. In Witcher 3, Geralt is just helping out…he is there for her. So it was pretty clear we want her as the next main person, main character.
The same sentiment was echoed by The Witcher 4 game director Sebastian Kalemba in an interview with German outlet GameStar:
We knew it from the get-go. I remember a discussion with Badowski. During Blood and Wine, we’d been talking about Ciri, and why it’s a good choice. Eight years, nine years ago, we already had a very solid motivation for why this is important and why this should be the next step for us. We knew it already there. Of course it wasn’t that crystallised, but the big idea was already there, and set in stone.
The Witcher 4 still doesn’t have a release date, and fans shouldn’t expect it before 2027. Previously, Geralt’s voice actor Doug Cockle responded to complaints from fans accusing the new installment of being “too woke.”
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